


Don't be late

by ghostly



Category: Free!
Genre: (kinda), Alternate Universe - Future Fish, Alternate Universe - Historical, Edo Period, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Past Lives, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 08:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3481340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostly/pseuds/ghostly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru waits, and dreams. (Past lives AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't be late

**Author's Note:**

> I know very little about Japanese culture and the Edo period, what I know is from Wikipedia and even that I butchered to suit the fic needs. So please beware of historical inaccuracy (hopefully not offensive).
> 
> I didn't want to put major character death to scare away anyone, but we're talking about past lives here.. Let me know if you think I should change the fic's warnings!
> 
> Also, English is not my first language, I’m sorry for any mistakes!

 

 

When his parents are away at work, Haru stays with his grandmother. While she works at the garden, he sits near, helping when prompted, and listening to her stories. Sometimes she tells fantastical stories about sea mermaids and playful forest spirits; sometimes she tells stories about her youth and late husband; and sometimes she tells stories about Haru.

 She tells him how he came into the world crying, and cried a lot when he was a baby.

“And then one day you dried up.” She tells him with a teasing smile.

Haru frowns. “Grandma, does that mean I don’t have any more tears?”

“Of course you do!” She chuckles. “You’re just saving them for when they’ll be important.”

She often tells the story of the first time they took three year old Haru to the beach. When he saw the ocean, he wouldn’t stop squirming in his mother’s arms. When she put him down, as soon as his tiny feet touched the sand, he took off running.

“We were so afraid you’d go into the water!” She tells him. “But you ran a long time on the seashore; it was as if you were looking for something. When you got tired, you also got really sulky. Your mood only improved when your father carried you into the sea, and you both spent a long time just swaying with the waves. You always did love water.”

When Haru hears this story, he often feels the need to take the walk down to Iwatobi’s beach, and stare at the blue horizon. He wonders what he could’ve been looking for.

 

-

 

One day Rin comes to school with a beautifully cut and polished transparent crystal, its many faces sparkling easily under the light. He preens under the attention of his classmates, and boasts about how it’s a Soulmate Stone.

“When you look through it at a person’s left eye, you’ll see the piece of their soul that belongs to their soulmate!” He proclaims, to the wide-eyed wonder of his classmates. Haru personally thinks it sounds unlikely.

Everybody starts trying it out, but as Haru predicted, they don’t see much more than the fractured images reflected in the faces of the crystal. Nagisa tries to convince Rei that he can see a penguin in his eye, and Rei spends the rest of the lunch period covering his eye with his hand, as if afraid a penguin might actually sprout through his eye socket.

“Come on, Haru, your turn!” Rin says, sitting in front of him.

“This is stupid.”

“Please, Haru-chan!” Nagisa whines loudly, momentarily forgetting about tormenting Rei.

Haru huffs, but stays put as Rin places the crystal in front of his eye and looks through it.

“I see…” Rin turns the stone this way and that, then pauses, frowning. “Green?”

Nagisa jumps up, crying out “let me see!” and taking the crystal from Rin. He does the same, then gasps, looking at Haru without the crystal, then back. “It really is green!”

Soon the whole class wants to look at Haru’s “green piece of soul”. Even Rei can’t come up with a viable explanation, as Haru’s eyes are very blue. Haru is annoyed at everyone’s nosiness, and wishes they would just leave it alone, leave _him_ alone. Nobody seems to notice his uneasy during their heated discussions of Haru’s soulmate, so he just turns his head to the side and stares at the sky through the window.

 

-

 

Haru dreams.

He dreams of wearing kimono, like his parents sometimes make him during festivals, but this one is much more uncomfortable and itchy. The obi is tied really tight, and the sleeves keep getting in the way of his hands.

In the dream he calls a strange woman _mother_ , and a strange man _father_. They live in an enormous traditional Japanese house full of servants, and he has to sit through many afternoon lessons with tutors. They scold him when he’s not paying attention – which he does, often – and lecture him endlessly on his responsibilities as the future daimyo.

In one of the dreams, a family of peasants comes to their house. The woman is carrying newborn twin babies, and the man begs his father for a job. Their rice crops had failed, he says, he can’t pay the taxes and he needs to feed their three children.

Haru, secretly watching though a slightly parted screen, finally spots a boy about his age hiding behind the man and clutching his kimono. His green eyes look teary and scared, and then they look right into Haru’s. Haru jumps back, and closes the screen, his heart thumping loudly in his chest.

 

-

 

At their high school graduation, it seems like everyone’s leaving. Rin and Sousuke are going to Australia, Rei and Nagisa to Tokyo. Even _Kisumi_ is going to a university in another town, but Haru is staying. He’s going to work in a bakery downtown under the tutelage of the chef; he’s good at cooking, and he imagines working at a bakery is not better or worse than anything else. He has no interest in graduating in any subject, much less going into competitive swimming (though Rin surely tried to convince him of it many times).

His friends are worried about him, he knows, but he cannot imagine leaving Iwatobi. He _has_ to stay, he thinks, a knot in his throat and another in his chest.

After he says his goodbyes to Rei and Nagisa at the airport – Rin and Sousuke having left weeks ago – he goes to the beach and sits in the sand, hugging his knees. He stares at the sun setting and stays put until the sky turns darker and darker, and the first stars become visible.

He is not looking for anything, he realizes, he’s _waiting_.

 

-

 

They see each other little in the first weeks the peasant family comes to work at the daimyo’s house. The boy trails after his father during his errands around town, and Haru mostly stays at the house.

It’s summer, and Haru manages to escape his tutors and run down to the lake in their property. He dresses down to his underwear and dives, swimming in straight lines back and forth, then floating around on his back with his eyes closed to get his breath back and begin again.

After an hour of that, he feels a bit hungry, so he turns back to the shore where he left with his kimono a few sweets he snatched from the kitchens. When he gets out of the water, he’s surprised to see the green eyed boy there.

Haru has never been around children his age before, so he just silently makes his way to his kimono and sits there, carefully opening the piece of cloth he brought the sweets in. He’s thinking if he should offer to share with the boy when he speaks.

“Y-you swim very well!” The boy stammers, looking down at his own knees, his whole face flushed. “It’s beautiful.”

Haru blinks, taken aback by the compliment. Wordlessly, he hands the boy one of the sweets. He tries to object, but one look from Haru and he eats the sweet dutifully.

When they finish the food, Haru gets up and cocks his head in the direction of the lake, looking at the peasant boy. “Let’s swim.”

He flushes again, shaking his head. “No, I’m sorry, I-I don’t know how to swim.”

Haru frowns, because he thinks everyone should know how to swim. It’s useful and, dare he admit it, fun (he’s pretty sure his father wouldn’t approve of men finding anything fun but drinking and courtesans).

“I’ll teach you.” He says, and the boy looks up, wide eyed and smiling, and under the summer sun Haru feels warm and light.

 

-

 

Haru has been working for months at the bakery. It’s just him, the chef, and the two attendants that manage the front in separate turns. They’re both teenagers – _like him_ , Haru sometimes forgets he’s not even nineteen, he sure feels older than the very excitable Momotarou and the clumsy Nitori.

One day Nitori awkwardly appears at the kitchen door, clutching his cellphone, with a very guilty expression in his face. “Satsuki-san, Haru-san, e-excuse me but I got a message from Momo and he won’t be able to make it to his shift, and I have to leave for school! I’m so sorry I have a test today I really can’t stay—“

“Nitori-kun.” Chef Satsuki stops his babbling, firmly but immediately smiling to soften the blow. “It’s okay, me and Haru will manage.”

“Thank you so much Satsuki-san! I’m really sorry!” Nitori bows and immediately runs out, probably already late to school.

“I’ll go manage the front.” Haru says, as much as he doesn’t like dealing with customers, Satsuki-san is still more necessary than him in the kitchen.

She thanks him sincerely, knowing his dislike for human interaction in general.

He takes some time to clean himself of the flour in his hands, and takes off his chef clothes and cap. He puts on the attendant apron and goes stay behind the counter.

It’s some time after lunch but still too early for an afternoon snack, so he actually spends almost an hour doing nothing. He looks ups when the bell on the door jingles.

There’s a boy there, tall and broad in the shoulders – he looks about Haru’s age, and when their eyes meet, he feels a surge of familiarity so strong it seems his heart misses a beat.

“Hello.” He says with a voice gentler than you’d expect from someone of his height. Haru answers with a quiet “hello” back, and the boy approaches the balcony, his eyes searching over the baked goods displayed behind the glass. “Could I have a piece of the… chocolate cake?”

Haru cuts the cake and the boy sits on a stool by the counter. Their silence feels weird, heavy, even with soft background music of the shop – Haru thinks he’s not imagining it, with the way the boy keeps fiddling with the fork, before taking a tiny bite of the cake. “Hmm, ah, this is really good!” The stranger says, smiling, his face pleasantly flushed.

Haru feels his own cheeks heat. He wonders if he should mention he did that chocolate cake himself, after chef Satsuki agreed he could replicate the recipe perfectly.

“I’m, uh, new here.” The boy continues awkwardly. “Actually I’m just here on vacation.”

“In Iwatobi?” Haru says, dubious. Iwatobi is not a common tourist rout.

The boy laughs. “It’s funny, I just opened the map and decided to come here. I’ve been to the beach with my family before, but, I don’t know, I wanted to come _here_.”

Haru feels his heart beat faster, and he can’t hold the green eyed stare anymore. He looks down at his hands, which are clutching the counter, shaking slightly. It feels so absurd, it can’t really be true, what’s he supposed to _say_ —

“I’m Makoto.” The boy offers kindly, probably noticing his distress.

“Haruka.”

 

-

 

Haru’s tutors disapprove of his friendship with a peasant, and he’s sure his parents would too if they ever actually paid attention to Haru outside of their own expectations of him. Despite of that, he and the boy grow up close friends.

Haru often escapes his lessons and they play in the garden or go explore the woods nearby, and when the weather is hot, they go swim in the lake. They often just stay together, talking or not, and Haru feels safe and happy in the boy’s company, like he never did with anyone else, anywhere else. When the boy smiles at him, eyes closing slightly, and holds his hand, Haru thinks it must be the same for him.

They seem to often share thoughts and wants, and sometimes Haru will think they’re the same, half of each other, and not two people with completely different places in society.

At fifteen, they share their first kiss, hidden behind the trees at the back of the daimyo’s property. Their escapades quickly take another meaning, and though they know how crucial it is to be discreet, they often get overwhelmed by their own want for each other. Haru’s sure most of the servants know, and he only hopes they’ll stay quiet.

It’s not long after that the daimyo announces Haru’s engagement to the daughter of another lord. The lord has hundreds of samurai retainers, and they’d need the alliance to deal with the peasants’ rebellion.

 

-

 

“Haru-san! The firefighter asked again about you!” Momo announces, entering the kitchen in a very extravagant fashion at the end of his shift.

“Firefighter?” He asks, still working on the frosting for a cake.

“Yes! The big dude from Osaka! Brown hair, green eyes?” Haru freezes, but Momo keeps talking, gesturing wildly. “He always comes during my shift! He always asks about you too. I said I was going into college prep class and he told me he was firefighter! Cool, right?! But I still think being a biologist is cooler—”

Haru tunes out Momo’s incessant babbling, and chef Satsuki, working beside him, chuckles quietly. “Maybe I should make you manage the front more. It seems you attract customers!”

She keeps chuckling, but Haru has his thoughts far away.

 

-

 

They make plans. They have little time before the wedding, but the boy talks of a little seaside village he heard of from a merchant – it’s small and quiet, composed mostly of families of fishers. Nobody would know who they are, and they wouldn’t care. They could build a house on the top of the hill, or by the sea.

“And we could swim, when the ocean is not too cold.” The boy says, smiling happily at the little fantasy. Haru can’t help but smile back.

They never make it to their dream seaside village. The rebellion reaches the daimyo’s house before they can get the help of the lord’s samurai army. The house ends in flames – Haru escapes from where his parents are hiding in the topmost level of the house, to try and find his lover, but the house collapses before he can see him one last time.

 

-

 

Haru wakes up gasping, still feeling the warmth of the fire and the taste of ashes in his mouth.

He gets up, scrubs his face and puts on some clothes. When he leaves the house, the sky is only beginning to lighten, turning blue grey and soft pink.

He runs almost the entire way down to the beach. He walks by the seashore until he sees Makoto standing there, looking at the sunrise, then turning to him. His hair looks golden under the every second stronger light of the day. Haru walks to him without realizing, like a metal compelled by a magnet.

Haru’s still out of breath from his run; he looks at Makoto’s serene smile and struggles to find words. “Do you— You feel it too then? You know?” He asks, sure he’s making no sense, but Makoto keeps smiling, and takes his hand in his.

“Yes.” He laughs, joyful but also sad, his eyes brilliant with unshed tears. “We’re finally here, right?”

“I’ve been here for nineteen years.” Haru manages gruffly, his voice cracking, trying to hold back his own tears. It seems impossible – it’s been a long time since he cried, and now feels important. “You’re late.”

Makoto laughs, then sobs, and hugs him. “I’m sorry.”

Haru hides his face and his tears in Makoto’s jacket. He hugs him tightly, feeling safe and happy like the only did in those earlier dreams, of summers in the lake, and kisses behind trees. "Don't be; we're here."

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ps: The soulmate stone was a complete invention of mine. Also the events of the "peasants' revolution". Wikipedia tells me that during the Edo period Christian peasants were persecuted, which resulted in the peasants' revolt, but I have no idea if anything like is described in the fic actually happened..sorry...


End file.
